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Alfred Howard & the The K23 Orchestra to Play Their Final Show Friday

Alfred Howard & the The K23 Orchestra will play their final show this Friday. The group, which released its debut album in 2002, has shared the stage with a striking number of bands over the years, including Ozomatli, STS9, Janes Addiction, Robert Walter’s 20th Congress, Slightly Stoopid, Fishbone, the Living Legends, Digable Planets, Antibalas and John Brown’s Body, among many others. But, after Fridays show, Howard will turn his attention away from music. At 30, as a struggling artist, pouring out soul into an empty dive bar, waiting for the stools to learn to applaud, filling up a hundred dollar gas tank and getting paid peanuts, heartache and headache at the

end of the night has become very tangible, he wrote in a recent note to his fans. There have been great shows in midst of slow nights, but those slow nights have taken their toll. These hard times are the large and leaden straw to break this camel’s back.

A million other memories are elusive now, but just as vivid at a different point of recollection, he writes elsewhere. The pillow I can rest on comfortably and forever, knowing that at least for a time, I lived that dream to the fullest, as a dream, before it fell into something else. Hopefully, we’ll see you next year at the O2 Arena or the Hampton Coliseum.
The jazz/funk/soul collective’s final show will take place at San Diegos Winston’s this Friday, December 5.